Imagine you’re looking to buy something on Amazon: a book, a CD, a toaster, a pool part, whatever. You are generally going to read the views before you buy. And, typically, if something has bad reviews across the board, you’ll move onto the next option.

How does that affect what you sell on Amazon? Quite simply, if someone is going to bypass a product because of the bad reviews, they are never going to see that you have it for sale.

Is there a way to overcome this? Maybe. Here are a few things I have used quite successfully:

Try writing a review that swings towards the positive aspects, justifying a higher rating. You really don’t want to give it 5-starts when everything else is 1- or 2-stars, however.

Identify who the product is best suited for. Here’s an example of how I defined the ideal reader for this book by Pat Cooper, a long time comedian. I make it pretty clear that if you’re under the age of 50, this book really won’t have any meaning for you.

Read all the other reviews to see if there is a wide array of opinions.. Here’s an example of a another review for a pet vacuum that I didn’t really think was right for me. My review was probably middle of the road. Because of this, I opted not to sell this product, but instead return it because I did pay a lot of money for it.

Look at the lowest rated reviews carefully. My guesstimate is that 40% of the time, someones review has nothing to do with the product. The reason they are upset may be because of shipping delays, expecting something different than what they thought they were getting (100% their fault), etc. For those reviews, I actually click a button and report the review as being inappropriate. (Just because the buyer is an idiot doesn’t mean the product should be penalized.) If you factor the duds out, and the remaining reviews are good, there’s a good change it will sell.

If nothing else, list the product for sale, see if you get any bites and, if you don’t the don’t use Amazon to sell it. do You always have that choice.